Short Stuff: Fortune Cookies

Everything you thought you knew about fortune cookies is wrong. Learn all the right stuff in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey you, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff about fortune cookies,
which is jam packed the stuff you didn't know about
fortune cookies. You mean the little cookies. It tastes terrible
that come from China. Uh part of that's right? Yeah,
which part the taste terrible part? Yeah? I love a

(00:25):
fortune cookie. I've never loved eating them, but I've always
liked getting that fortune. I've had one or two fortune
cookies where I was like, that was all right. I
don't know what the deal was. They were freak fortune cookies,
I guess because there is definitely a rarity, for sure,
but yeah, it's fun. They should sandwich a fortune in
the middle of an oreo. Yeah, why not? Then that'd

(00:47):
be down so um. One of the things that I
never realized that I never realized. I didn't realize until
I started researching this, Chuck, is that the fortune is
not actually baked into the fortune cookie. Did you know that? Well,
sure it would catch fire. I didn't never think about that.
I never did. And also it would be like gross
from the you know, the batter. A fortune cookie is

(01:07):
a little thin wafer cookie and when you start to
cook it. Initially it's batter still, so that would make
the fortune paper pretty mushy. So all right, smart guy,
how do they put the fortunes in the fortune cookie? Then?
What do you mean by you never really thought about it?
Was you literally never thought about it for one second?
That's absolutely true. Uh. They bake it for a little

(01:28):
while first, and then they stick it in there, right, yeah,
bake it and stick it bacon stick, and then fold
it bake stick. And well you gotta fold first, right,
you fold afterwards. That's the key. So you bake it
as a flat wafer cookie, and then when you pull
it out of the oven, it's still pliable, really quick
folded into the into that thing with the with the
fortune inside. All right, Well, we joked earlier. I joked

(01:51):
about it coming from China, And you might think that
they do because you find them traditionally in Chinese restaurants
at the end of the meal. But that is probably
not so. But we do have a couple of reasons
why people might think this, and one of them is
the fact that this story about moon cakes from China,
This this food that's kind of associated with the mid

(02:14):
Autumn festival when they're celebrating uh fall harvest. It's a
little pastry. It's got a little sweeter, savory filling. They're
usually round because of shape like the moon, but they
can be square, and they're baked to a golden brown
as far as the Cantonese style go. And they stamp
a little uh name when they're cooking this thing after

(02:35):
they mold it, so it's got a little stamp on
their right, which tells you what's inside. For a lot
of times, there's stuff like lotus paste, which is sweet
sweet sweet bean paste, which is good red date paste,
which is originally where the word jujub comes from. And
then no matter whether it's salty or savory. From what
I understand, the surprise in the middle is one or

(02:56):
more salted cured chicken egg yolks. Duck egg yolks. I'm sorry,
which are Have you ever had one of this? I
don't think so. I think i'd probably know if I did.
It does not get saltier than that. Part of your
face will just fall right off after a couple of bites.
It's crazy, just rise up and falls. You will well,

(03:17):
then you will like duck eggs. You can get them
at um, h Mart. They'll have them in like the
dairy section. What'sh mar. Oh, it's like the big Asian
grocery store. Korean grocery store. M I don't know about that.
We have there are local Japanese storey. No, this is
like a supermarket. Okay, it's over on two eight five
and Peachtree Industrial, of course it is. Yeah, go check

(03:39):
it out. Actually it's really good because not only do
they have everything that's Asian and like a supermarket format chuck,
so like all sorts of stuff you've never heard of
to try, they also have the most outstanding food court
you will ever encounter in your life. Oh you know what.
I may have been there, then it's really good. Are
there like eight eight restaurants? Yeah? Yeah, I've been there

(04:03):
because I'm constantly seeking the best egg roll in Atlanta
because Atlanta doesn't do egg rolls right. Oh yeah, I
never really tried them. Yeah, they're the worst. I finally
found a place though. Okay. Anyway, So, as the story
goes back in the thirteenth and fourteen centuries, when China
was being occupied by Genghis Khan and the Mongols, legend
has it that they didn't like this lotus nut paste,

(04:26):
and so when they were warring, the Chinese hidden messages
about like what they were doing, the date of an uprising,
maybe instructions or you know, how to coordinate the battle,
and they would stick them in these moon cakes, knowing
that their message would get through to the Chinese. But
because the Mongols didn't like the lotus nut basted, they
would just go ah and they'd throw it away. Yeah.

(04:47):
Can't you see like some Mongol horde being like, what
is that a mooncake? What's in there? They're like cured
salted duck, egg yolk. Yeah, what else? Lotus nut paste?
Oh God, get it away from me? Yeah, what else? Oh?
Just instructions about the invasion, right exactly. So so that
legend apparently is pretty widespread, and some people say that's

(05:07):
probably where fortune cookies came from, right yeah, And I think, uh.
The other thing too is that when children are born
in China that families send out little cake rolls with
messages inside announcing the birth of the child. So there's
these couple of things, and the fact that, of course
that you could have been Chinese restaurants, most people would
just assume that they're from China. Yes, but then most

(05:29):
people would be wrong because there's basically no one who's
looked into this story um or the origin of fortune
cookies that is like, yeah, they're from China, that's just wrong.
And we'll tell you where they are actually probably from
right after this, right, where are they from? Japan and America?

(06:14):
That's right? Uh? Dating back to the eighteen seventies in Kyoto, Japan,
they had what we're called fortune crackers. Do you want
to rattle off that Japanese name? Uh? Suki uda semba man,
You've really nailed it, Thank you. Can you actually speak Japanese? Though? No,
I just know how to pronounce Japanese words when I

(06:35):
see you. I didn't know if you were learning a
little bit or not. No, it's just it won't stick.
And I've never like sat down and actually really try.
Well that's not true. I have tried a couple of times,
but I've never like gone to class or anything. But
for the stuff I have tried to pick up, it's
just not stuck so far. How good is Yummy's Japanese? Oh,
it's like pretty much flawless. Well, that's why you don't
learn it, because when you go to Japan you're just like,

(06:58):
I'm translator built in. I'm very lucky too, because it's
like a second nature impulse for her to just tell
me what's going on than just continue on in this conversation.
It's really it's really helpful. But yeah, it's it's tough
not to become dependent on that. She's like, I hate
that big dope. I don't know what's going on fac here.
So yeah, what's that? What's that guy doing? Good stuff?

(07:22):
I wish Emily spoke something good? What does she speak?
So she doing with her life? She studied French, but
like like every other kid study a little bit of French,
she doesn't really know any It's like me and my
German were useless. I'm with you, like me in French too.
But those fortune crackers in Japan from the eighteen seventies
or flavored generally with like mis or sesame or something

(07:44):
like that, not to the fortune cookie that we know.
The other differentiator is that the fortunes were tucked into
the bend of the fortune cookie. Pretty lazy people in
Kyoto as opposed to wear inside the actual four yes yes,

(08:04):
which you don't. I mean, that's not good. They didn't.
They never learned the bacon stick. No, I guess not.
But they did seem to originate something like fortune cookies.
The question is how did that get to America. That's
still unclear. So instead we say, okay, how where did
the actual fortune cookie as we know it came from?

(08:25):
And that's actually disputed. But the first, the earliest um
story is in nineteen o seven and there's a guy
named MacOda Makotagara and he was the caretaker of the
Japanese tea gardens in San Francisco. And there's a story
I've not been Actually it's a Golden Gate park, right,

(08:45):
I've got to check it out. But um hog aora san.
He apparently was fired for being Japanese by the mayor
of San Francisco at the time, who said, there's a
Japanese person taking care of the Japanese tea gardens. It's
going park fire. That person not very San Francisco. No,
And apparently Mr Hagiwara was very beloved and the public

(09:07):
came to his aid and made sure that he got rehired. Right,
And it's a thank you. He made legit fortune cookies
like we know them, with little thank you notes inside
and give gave them out to people who supported him.
And like you said, this was nineteen o seven. So
a lot of people say, well, there you go, bing
bang boom. That's when it started in the US. Yeah.

(09:29):
San Francisco is the home of the fortune cookie, and
Los Angeles says not so fast, everybody. Of course, not
only were we the ones who invented the fortune cookie,
it was actually a Cantonese immigrant from China who invented
the fortune cookie. No, not in nineteen o seven. I
don't even believe your story, says l A. This happened
in there was a guy named David Jung, founder of

(09:51):
the Hong Kong Noodle Company, and he used to hand
out little fortune cookies with little Bible scripture um printed
on them as kind of a me up for people
for who were unemployed wandering around Los Angeles that he
did encounter. That's right. That's one version of the story.
The other is that he created them as little appetizers.

(10:12):
When people are waiting very Seinfeldian, waiting for their table
at the Chinese restaurant, he would hand them out, uh,
two people in line as a little appertif I guess
to hold you over. So there's a mock court that
was put together in three, the Court of Historical Reviews
and Appeals. I believe they ruled on other stuff previously,

(10:33):
but in three they took up the issue of them
the Fortune Cookie, and being a San Francisco mock court,
they ruled very clearly that San Francisco was the birthplace
of the fortune Cookie. That's right, Ellie and San Francisco,
they always have hated each other. They're always added over something,
you know, And I think San Diego is like what
about me? For San Diego, they're just down their surfing. Bro. Yeah.

(10:58):
Remember we did that weird show there and that man
was church or something. Yeah, And for a little while
I was convinced that it was the church from um
Prince of Darkness, the John Carpenter movie. But I went
back and watched the movie and I was like, this
is in it. But it had the same vibe. Yeah.
I remember two things about that show. I remember it
didn't really have a green room bathroom, so I was
just in there peeing in the urnals next to everyone

(11:20):
and they're like, oh, there's Chuck. It was like, yeah,
that's me. And uh, I remember there was a guy
on the front row fully filming the entire thing with
a video camera, and he looked mad about it like
he was he was like generating evidence or something. It
was weird, so strange. Uh, maybe we'll come back one day,
San Diego, if you'd get your act together. That's rights.

(11:44):
Oh yeah. They were made for about forty years with chopsticks,
which that takes a lot of skill to to fuld
and make these things with chopsticks. I would think it's
a very Japanese way to make fortune cookies, and it
actually was the Japanese bakers in San Francisco who dominated
the business from the early twentieth century up until World

(12:04):
War Two, when they were forced out of the business
because they were also forced out of their homes after
Pearl harbor Um and the Japanese were uprooted and put
into internment camps. And one of the outcomes of that
was that they stopped making fortune cookies, and apparently this
created a vacuum that the Chinese immigrants in the United
States stepped in to fill. Very nice. Uh. Those first

(12:27):
fortune cookies in the US did have little proverbs and
sometimes scripture, but they started to get a little more
English and Americanized by the nineteen thirties, and he started
to get some of these, like you know, Confucius says
this kind of things in there. Uh, and then you know,
poor Richard's Almanac kind of stuff went in there, and

(12:48):
then the lottery numbers started creeping in. Never been a
big fan of that with a little emoji smiley faces
and jokes and stuff like that. Not not a big
fan of that stuff. No, especially miley faces. Unless there's
some other message that makes a smiley face appropriate. I'm
alright with that. Just give me a classic Fortune. So

(13:08):
one of the great ironies of all this chuck is
that in the mid nineties, the Wanton Food Company, the
world's largest maker of Fortune cookies, looked around and said,
what market have we not penetrated. Europe loves these things,
America loves these things. What about China? China is gonna
love these two And it took off like a rocket

(13:28):
right now, It did not at all, And they basically
said they're too American for us. And even though they
make four million and these things every day, to the
tune of about three billion cookies every year, they didn't
take off there. They didn't like them, they didn't want them. Yeah,
And I did that math, and apparently they have two factories,
because you'd be making about eight million a data to

(13:49):
come up with three billion. But who knows. I wouldn't
be surprised if that's how much they were making. I mean,
those things are flowing like water here in the States.
Fuzzy math, Yes it is. Um. So I want to
give a shout out to What's Cooking America l A,
Times Today, History and um Jennifer eight Lee who popped

(14:10):
up and I Think our Chinese Food on Christmas episode.
She wrote The Fortune Cookie Chronicles adventures in the world
of Chinese Food. She did a lot of scholarly research
on fortune cookies recently, so hats off to her. Uh
and hats off to you guys for listening to this
episode of Short Stuff. Short Stuff is away now. Stuff

(14:33):
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